“The economy, stupid” James Carville
Both of these elections hinged largely on economic conditions in the respective countries. Brexit never resulted in any economic gains for working class British. Everything gets more and more expensive. So the voters swung to the other extreme. But unless this quickly results in change for the better, the results may not be what the left expects.
In France, the voters swung to the right rather than the left, but for the same reasons. The leftists in France pulled some fast political maneuvering and avoided being swept out of office – this however does not change the underlying economic trend nor peoples’ beliefs. Unless the left can pull a rabbit out of the economic hat, they will soon be in even bigger trouble.
In the US the election is complicated by the advanced age of both candidates plus the obvious dementia of one and the moral and ethical shortcomings of the other. However, if both remain in the race, what will decide who wins will be economic conditions, not “abortion”, “trans rights”, “gun rights”, “capitalism”, “socialism”, “fascism”, “militarism”, or any other social issues. Few believe the glowing, gold plated figures released by the Government Media to show how great the economy is doing, because they are working two low paying jobs without benefits and odd jobs on the side to try to meet ever growing living expenses, rents and taxes. The stock market is irrelevant, because they don’t own stocks. They look at how they and their friends and neighbors are doing, and do not like what they see. The bad news is that it really doesn’t matter in that respect who wins. None of the candidates is a Javier Milei. Neither party, nor the third parties, would support such a candidate. And the American people are unwilling to go through the long period of pain necessary to restore sound economic conditions. Whether Milei can pull it off in Argentina is still open to question.
Some peoples’ solution is to start a war. They believe there is nothing like a good war to trigger economic progress. WW2 did lead to America’s surge to become the most powerful country (militarily and economically) on the planet. But that was almost a century ago and we have been squandering our lead since fighting endless, useless and ceaseless wars and usually losing them politically, while building a global empire we can’t afford to maintain. With the coming of missiles and nuclear weapons, America can no longer hide behind a 3000 mile moat. We have outsourced most of our industrial capacity to Asia to make more profits and to deceive ourselves we are being environmentally responsible. Most of the resources we consume are held by hostile powers. If we provoke WW3, it will likely be the end of us.
Economic Decline combined with the present social degeneration is extremely dangerous and almost certainly will lead to a collapse of democratic governments before long. Since everyone lies about everything, nobody (who can reason) believes anyone. But the Age of Reason has been replaced by the Age of Emotion some time ago, and the herds believe whatever makes them feel good. When the slow collapse of everything we depend upon becomes a rapid collapse, people will easily fall for the liar that makes them feel good. And then we will have a dictatorship. To have a strong free country and economy, we need strong people who will tell the truth even if it does not benefit them politically. We need people with integrity who keep their word.
We need people who are educated, not indoctrinated. We need people who will work hard and well and can do useful things. We need people who will at least try to resist the corruption of power, and who believe they will have to answer to God for their actions. We need people who value family, children, and community. There are still individuals like that left, but they are a dwindling minority in the West. The pendulum always swings, and efforts to stop and reverse it are usually futile. The pendulum has swung from right to left about as far as it can go, and is now reversing. When it gets back near the center of its swing things will get better, but unfortunately that is probably 50 years away, and equally unfortunately the pendulum will not settle there.
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